


Good Demons Help You Bury Bodies

by modernKhione



Series: salva me, fons pietatus [3]
Category: Shall We Date?: Obey Me!
Genre: Comfort, Dead People, Demons, F/M, Gen, Gravedigging, Not Canon Compliant, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24338878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/modernKhione/pseuds/modernKhione
Summary: Sometimes a girl just needs some comfort and help from Satan after accidentally committing murder and/or arson.
Relationships: Main Character/Satan (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!), Satan (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!) & Reader, Satan (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Original Female Character(s), Satan (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Reader
Series: salva me, fons pietatus [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1777036
Comments: 14
Kudos: 181





	Good Demons Help You Bury Bodies

**Author's Note:**

> Not quite a reader-insert, but also not fully an original character. This main character/reader doesn't have any pacts with the brothers yet and has been in the Devildom for a few months already. I am not going with canon; just taking inspiration from it. I've tagged the character as female because I wrote with a female character in mind, but I'm not sure that is reinforced in the fic itself. If it works for gender-neutral, let me know. I'm very new to writing in second person.
> 
> Anyway, I just have a lot of feelings about Satan and somehow I managed to write this all in one sitting. Hope you enjoy.
> 
> (24 July 2020: some minor edits; phrasing/grammar/spelling fixes)

You stared at the charred bodies on the ground before you. Numbly, you repeated to yourself, _This isn’t real_. Not for the first time this year, you wanted to believe that phrase, though never before had you clung to that thought so desperately, like a drowning woman trying to skim the surface with her fingertips. Slowly, you watched your hand reach out and brush the ash away from one spot, revealing a patch of desiccated flesh. Or was it bone, blackened by flame? You yanked your hand back before you could find out.

_Breathe in._

_Breathe out._

You closed your eyes, steadying a hand over your beating heart. You watched as one hand pulled out your D.D.D. and hit the speed dial. You placed the phone to your ear, delicately, as if afraid to touch it more than necessary. _Can demons sense sin through a phone?_ You almost wanted to giggle. Wouldn’t you find out soon enough? But your demon picked up on the third ring.

“Mmrello?” a sleepy voice greeted you. It was late, you only just remembered. Though he didn’t usually sleep until a few hours before dawn.

You let out a breath, nonetheless, at his soft voice. You tried for a smile, a light tone, though you knew (hoped) he could see through you like nobody else.

“Would you say we’re friends? Good friends?” Your voice wobbled at the end, thinking already of the next thing you had to say.

“Of course,” the voice replied. “What’s going on? Where are you?” You breathed in. You told him where you were: an alley near the largest casino downtown. He made no comment on your location, though. Instead he replied, “I’ll be right there.” Rustling—he was getting up.

“Wait.” The rustling stopped. “Bring gloves—a-and a shovel. Please.” You squeezed your eyes shut, hoping—because the idea of prayer was laughable, down here—that he wouldn’t ask any hard questions. You could not allow yourself to think, not here, not now.

He hummed. “All right. Stay hidden. Call—Mammon—if you’re in immediate danger. You’re near one of his usual haunts.” Then he hung up, and all at once you collapsed onto a crate; your hands trembled. Before you could drop it, you put your D.D.D. back into your jacket pocket. Then you tipped your head back against the wall, eyes closed. Your hair got wet from the contact, probably brushing off a layer of grime, but you were beyond caring at the moment. All you had to do was—survive.

Yes, that was it, you thought, as bursts of angry, brilliant white light danced behind your eyelids. You had known, in the very moment it had happened, that what you had seen was not meant for a mortal mind, for mortal eyes. Would you be punished? Would you be found out? The track record of Heaven, from what you had learned here, suggested you were not one towards whom they tended to show mercy. You laughed. So much for ignoring problems ‘til they went away, eh?

And things had been going so well for once—you had been laughing, joking, singing again. You had rediscovered joy. You should have known better though.

A soft brush of skin against your cheek made you startle, but a quick hand over your mouth covered your scream.

“It’s just me,” Satan whispered, his ever-present smile fading as he took you in. His thumb brushed over your cheek again, and he frowned. “You’re crying.”

Hand on your own cheek, you found he was right. You hadn’t noticed. You control was usually better than this. “Sorry.” You wiped your eyes with the backs of your knuckles, then tried to smile. “It’s nothing.”

That made Satan’s frown deepen, and a flash of fear—dread—gripped your heart, but he only asked, “Are you hurt?” His eyes were dark in this dim alley, his face half in shadow. Had he not been so familiar to you now, you might have been scared at the intensity in his eyes.

And why weren’t you scared? What made _him_ the exception to your over-tuned senses? What made the Avatar of Wrath less terrifying to you than the wrath of ordinary men? Other men?

Your eyes suddenly focused on a hand, offering you a pair of blue nitrile gloves. You wiped your hands on your jeans and put them on, fast. Your heart steadied once they were on. Good.

“What happened?” he asked, his voice gentle and soft, belying his true strength, the true nature of his emotions. But you were taken in by it nonetheless.

You twisted your fingers around your wrist, a nervous habit left from the times you wore a watch. “It was an accident,” you began, your words rushed. Satan’s expression didn’t change. You swallowed, your mouth painfully dry, then continued. “I don’t know—they were threatening me. I caught a few words, not English. Or—or human. But they—I knew it wasn’t good—safe—so I fought back. And then _this_ happened.”

Your shoulders rose with every half-formed phrase; you gestured to the—the _bodies_ before you, as you finished your half-sensical explanation. Satan had to have walked past them to reach you, but he looked over anyway. His expression shifted slightly; you caught what was perhaps a small sound of surprise. He stared for what seemed a long time before nodding once, firmly.

“Right,” he said at last, turning back to you, shoulders squared. He then held out a shovel for you, which you silently accepted, and proceeded to bend over the remains, hands splayed above them. A shimmering veil appeared below his hands, then a swirl of shadow cloaked the remains. A blink later, and Satan picked up a burlap sack with a small pine tree sticking out, the ashes and bones nowhere in sight. He held the sack under his arm without any difficulty, as if it were just another stack of books. He motioned for you to follow him as he began to walk away. “We’re running an experiment in Devildom soil,” he told you quietly. You nodded. A glimmer of mirth seemed to light his eyes then, as if this were just another elaborate prank. “And I know just the place to conduct it.” He stopped at the mouth of the alley, holding his free hand out to you.

You gripped it tightly.

And just like that, hand in hand, he led you out of town, never once letting go.

You walked in silence for a while, his strides slowing to match yours. Your joined hands swung lightly with each step. It was only now that you felt your head begin to clear from the panic and desperation that had trapped you in that dark alley, beside the debauched revelry of the casino. You suddenly realized, passing others on the street, how some demons stopped to whisper to each other. You almost turned your head to listen in on one of them, but a squeeze of your hand had you looking up at Satan instead.

“Don’t mind them,” he whispered, his polite smile plastered to his face again. You never were quite sure which emotion he was masking with that smile, though you had your guesses. “Just focus on me,” he said, and the edges of that smile softened in the brief second he looked at you, squeezing your hand once again. Then it was replaced as he walked forward without acknowledging anyone else on the streets. That was what made him so different from Mammon and Asmo, the other two brothers who usually took you out on the town. They were always so focused on the people or the sights, the shops and the window displays, but that was not the case with Satan. Where Mammon and Asmo both seemed a part of the world, Satan flowed through it, as if he were merely a visitor, barely even an observer. The tiniest crease was between his brows, a sign of some uncontainable irritation. It was only ever smoothed, you found, when he was engrossed in a book or enmeshed in a particularly diverting topic of discussion. And lately, it seemed, when he was speaking with you.

Though that was maybe your own hopes being projected onto him. You flattered yourself if you thought he was interested in a painfully average human like you. At best, he was simply more amused by your impossible theories born from an abundance of ignorance and just enough knowledge to make you appear the fool. When he and Solomon spoke at length on anything regarding magic or the non-human realms, you found yourself totally lost, despite your best efforts at studying. And even with Ancient History, one of the few topics in which you were well-versed, you were quickly outclassed by the simple fact that you were not alive as near to the events in question as they had been.

You sighed a little; these were the thoughts that plagued your mind as you were led from one place to another by Satan, who never paused to check his directions. He really did know where he was going.

After a little while, the two of you arrived outside the gate of what looked like a park, though it was completely empty of any other people. You let go of Satan’s hand to push the gate open, then carefully ventured inside, looking all around.

“What is this place?” you asked.

Satan walked past, seemingly familiar with the sights. “A public park—one of Lord Diavolo’s older projects taking inspiration from the human world.”

You eyed the numerous weeds in riotous colors, alive and wild. “It looks abandoned.”

Satan nodded. “Yes. He quickly realized that demons, as a whole, have little use for such things. We hardly _need_ a park to engage in our usual activities; public and private hold much less meaning when fewer things are taboo.” A small smile touched his lips. The both of you were silent after that, walking past dry fountains and stone benches overgrown with a reddish sort of ivy. As you rounded the corner, Satan stopped, nodding to himself. “Right. This is probably good enough.”

You looked around. The undergrowth was a bit sparser here, and in front of you there grew a great gnarled tree, larger than any you had ever seen. You half-heartedly tested the soil with your shovel; it was packed hard and would be difficult to dig.

“We’re burying—them—here?” You asked as Satan dropped the sack he’d been holding, the illusion dissipating as it hit the ground. He reached to take the shovel from you.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “No one ever comes here anymore.” He struck the soil with the shovel and almost effortlessly began to dig a hole. He continued in the same manner, “And a bit of ash and flesh will do Yggy some good.”

You blinked. “Yggy?” Satan paused and pointed at the giant tree before the two of you. You looked at it again… there was a lizard-like thing, sleeping at its base. Something clicked. “No. No way.” You stared at Satan, who was now half-sunken into the ground. “ _Yggdrasil?!_ ” He winced, and abruptly you remembered how quiet it was here, and how sensitive demon hearing could be. “Sorry,” you whispered.

Satan paused in his digging to look at you. He was spotless, not a drop of sweat on him—and you knew the ground had been hard as rock, when you’d tested it earlier. Demon strength still surprised you at the worst times. He smiled one of his fake smiles at you, the one that meant he was amused at your ignorance, but also—that your ignorance annoyed him.

“Where else did you expect to see the world tree?” he asked, cocking his head.

You let your gaze wander back to the tree, up its branches, up to where it disappeared into the dark Devildom sky. It seemed to reach upwards, towards infinity. “I didn’t expect to see it at all,” you admitted. You looked back at him, wanting to take your words back even before you said them. “The Bible, demons and angels, I mean. Aren’t those all, well… Christian? Or Abrahamic, at least.”

He regarded you for a moment. “So, because I exist, that means the Abrahamic God must as well? Just that cosmology and absolutely nothing else?”

You felt your cheeks warm. “I _know_ that’s not logically sound! I just… you know… everyone always makes this religious stuff out to be all or nothing, you’re right or wrong. And I’m here now, and my classes have me memorizing the _rings of Hell_ , so. Yeah.” You felt more indignant with every word—actually, you had felt pretty indignant about the way your intelligence was treated overall down here, given your limited knowledge. “I apologize for my silly human mind assuming things,” you added, crossing your arms, trying to hide the bite in your words, trying not to show how much he was getting to you.

After a few moments of silence, Satan sighed and shook his head, turning away from you and starting to dig again. “That isn’t quite how this works. Didn’t you say you were an atheist?”

“I did—I am!”

You heard a slight smile in his voice as he replied, back still towards you, “Who do you think created this place? Why do you think we even have city walls?”

“I don’t know.” Now you wondered. Satan made it sound as if—perhaps there wasn’t just one Hell? Perhaps the world wasn’t so simple as to have only one truth. After all, Satan and Lucifer were very different people, and Solomon was, very much, nothing like you had expected. That already disproved the source material’s authority—well, what you considered the source material—when it came to this world. You mulled these thoughts over, absently finding a nearby bench and sinking down into it. Reconciling the notion that the Norse world tree was in a fairly Christian interpretation of Hell was not easy, especially considering you had to start from very little knowledge of either. You were still trying to slot these pieces together, a tantalizing idea forming just out of reach of your mind, when Satan gently touched your shoulder, startling you. “What? Wait—you’re done?” You looked around. The remains were nowhere in sight, and neither was there any trace that the ground had been disturbed nearby, where you could have sworn Satan had been digging.

The demon only chuckled. “That’s better.” You looked at him for clarification. He tipped a finger under your chin, gazing down at you. “You look much happier when you’re trying to figure out metaphysics.”

You leaned back, your mouth opening—but you found that you had no words to say. Satan didn’t tease you for it; he simply smiled, for real this time. He brushed some hair back behind your ear, so light you barely felt his touch, as he stood aside.

“C’mon. We don’t want Lucifer catching us sneaking in after curfew.”

Really? You looked back at him doubtfully; he loved nothing more than to mess with Lucifer, didn’t he? But you slid off the bench anyway, not personally wanting a lecture from the foreboding demon. Flashes of memory from earlier that night came to mind as you asked, “You won’t ask how I did it? Or—or, I don’t know, I mean, I did m-murder—”

“No.” Satan turned to face you again, and you unconsciously took a step back. His eyes were lit like vicious green flames. He softened though, noticing your distance, and passed a hand over his face, breathing out a sigh. Before you could apologise, he held his hand up, stopping you. His eyes were clear and calm again when next he spoke. “They would have hardly fared better if they were caught harming you, not to mention that they were very low-level demons; not worth much. And besides,” his tone lightening as he added, “friends don’t let friends bury bodies alone.”

You let out a huff of laughter, all nervous energy. “Did you get that from a TV show?” you teased.

To your surprise, Satan flushed. “Perhaps.” Then, as you giggled, he turned the tables back on you. “It didn’t sound like you knew how you did it either, so there’s no point in asking.”

You bit your lip, reminded of what you had done. “That’s true,” you admitted slowly. “I really don’t know how—it happened so fast. And it was so bright. I was really surprised nobody came to see what’s up.”

“Oh, that’s normal,” Satan replied. “It’s usually not a good idea to poke into other demons’ business, even for demons,” he explained, a smile quirking up at the edge of his lips. You had had _many_ bad ideas, in that case, trying to get the brothers to treat each other better. “What is a surprise,” he continued, “is that you managed to _burn_ them to death. Most of us are fairly heat-proof, which I’m sure you understand.” You nodded, a memory of Asmo inviting you to a terrifyingly hot bath coming to mind. “When—if—you’re ready, we could research it together. If you want.” He glanced at you sidelong, and a burst of warmth suffused your heart.

Demon he might be, but Satan had been more considerate than most humans you had met in your short life. You reached out and took his hand in both of yours. “Thank you.”

And that lovely blush was back as he tugged you forward, back towards the House of Lamentation. “You’re welcome,” he replied, quiet but no less sincere for it.

And like that, the two of you walked home in a comfortable silence.


End file.
